COLLEGE FOOTBALL; Home of the Heisman May Have to Shut Doors

The venerable Downtown Athletic Club, home of the Heisman Trophy, is faced with extinction if its financial woes are not resolved.

The club, located on West Street, shut down temporarily after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

It has moved the annual Heisman ceremony in December to the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square. The club is still being cleaned of the dirt that came through its empty windows when the World Trade Center was destroyed.

The club emerged from bankruptcy proceedings two years ago but operates at a deficit.

''The bottom line,'' James E. Corcoran, the club's president, wrote in a letter to the club's 900 members last week, ''is that if our members living and working out together on Wall Street for the past 20 years cannot come up with a solution to this challenge, then we all know what the final outcome will be.''

The club has short-term hopes of reopening in January, which would be followed, it believes, by finding an experienced operator to run and market the club, and a lender to refinance its $8.3 million mortgage, which must be repaid next August.

If the club does not succeed, the fate of the Heisman Trophy, its best-known asset, would be in doubt. The club receives licensing revenue from the Heisman, like TV fees from ESPN.

''The club owns it and it will stay in New York City,'' Corcoran said Tuesday, but would not elaborate on any contigency plans he has.

Josh Krulewitz, a spokesman for ESPN, said, ''We do a ton of college football and we'd have an interest in the Heisman if it gets beyond the speculative stage and the opportunity presents itself.''

The club could also sell the Heisman to another organization similar to those that sponsor other college football awards. The Outland Trophy is awarded by the Football Writers Association of America; the Butkus Award by the Downtown Athletic Club of Orlando, Fla., and the Vince Lombardi Award by the Rotary Club of Houston.

In his letter, Corcoran wrote that as part of a plan to reopen in January -- without restaurant facilities -- the club needed to renew at least half its membership at $2,200 a year.

The club also needs to pay for pool, elevator and interior repairs ''within projected estimates'' and to pay its monthly mortgage bills.

''It we could go from 900 to 2,000 members, you've got another $2.2 million and we can pay our debt service and refinance,'' Corcoran said.

The club has hired people to call each member and should have a gauge in two weeks about the renewal rate.

Corocoran added, ''The whole goal is to open with minimal services to get our people back in there, where they've been going for 20 years to see their friends.''

Corcoran, a member since 1984, said the club lost 11 members in the attack on the World Trade Center.

''They're trying to put faces to names, because sometimes they only know someone by their first names,'' Corcoran said. ''They call and say, 'Jim, is that so and so?' ''

The club has had financial problems for years, which led to its federal bankruptcy filing in 1998. To satisfy creditors, the club sold its 35-story Art Deco building for $16 million to a real estate investment firm, which resold the bottom 13 floors to the club for $8 million. The mortgage must be paid off in August.

Membership has dwindled severely, from a peak of nearly 4,000 two decades ago to 900 now. It has been hurt by changes in the tax laws that made corporate memberships less attractive to companies; Wall Street mergers; corporate relocations; and the advent of company-owned exercise facilities.

Now it needs a club operator and a refinanced mortgage.

''Finding an operator who would want to come into a landmark building and have an association with the Heisman would be ideal,'' Corcoran said, who added that some deals for operators had fallen through.

And so far, lenders have been reticent. ''The response is,'' Corcoran said, '' 'How many members do you have?' and 'Are you profitable?' They want us to reopen.''

Corcoran, a senior vice president of Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, said: ''You'd think we could come up with a way to creatively finance it. But it's the whole asset-rich, cash-poor situation.''